Indian content-sharing platform ShareChat has raised $145 million in contemporary funding from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and two different traders, giving it a valuation of $2.88 billion, the corporate advised Reuters on Tuesday.
The funding indicators rising fascination for Indian content-sharing and short-video apps which have grow to be in style ever since New Delhi final yr banned ByteDance’s TikTok and another Chinese apps following an India-China border conflict.
ShareChat permits customers to put up content material in 15 Indian languages. After TikTok was banned, the Indian agency additionally launched an identical short-video sharing app named Moj which has since grow to be in style and clocked tens of millions of downloads.
The newest funding spherical was led by Temasek and Moore Strategic Ventures, with participation from a fund collectively arrange by Mirae Asset and South Korean net portal Naver Corp , ShareChat mentioned in its assertion. Reuters is first to report the fund increase.
The newest investments come round 4 months after ShareChat raised $502 million from Tiger Global, Snap Inc , Twitter and a few others, which on the time valued it at simply over $2.1 billion.
“Investments raised this year including this additional capital infusion will help the company double down (on) its strategic priorities,” ShareChat mentioned.
The firm will proceed to put money into artificial-intelligence capabilities of video app Moj and improve its in-app enhancing instruments, mentioned CEO Ankush Sachdeva. ShareChat has 180 million energetic customers. Moj has 160 million customers and counts Facebook’s Instagram Reels as its prime rival.
India’s digital startups ecosystem is changing into a darling of traders.
China’s Ant Group-backed meals supply agency Zomato had a stellar debut on Indian bourses final week, valuing the agency at $13 billion, whereas others together with SoftBank-backed ride-hailing agency Ola are additionally eyeing IPOs.
ShareChat has no rapid IPO plans and the corporate for now will concentrate on increasing its present enterprise and choices, a supply conversant in the technique mentioned.
